Towards more accurate and policy relevant footprint analyses: Tracing fine-scale socio-environmental impacts of production to consumption

Godar, Javier; Persson, Martin; Tizado, Emilio Jorge; Meyfroidt, Patrick

doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.02.003

Cited by 118 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Including each country/continent's supply chain would be useful to track downstream flows to their final destination, although a priori it wouldn't be possible to reach the same level of disaggregation as in the case of France. FAO statistics could be used to implement this idea. On a similar topic, the model could be compared and enriched with the work of Kastner and colleagues () and Godar and colleagues () that depict methods for enhanced tracing of international trade and subnational footprints. Intra‐regional freight is not taken into account because of a lack of information: the distance between local crop fields and transformation industries in the same region is neglected, only inter‐regional and international distances are estimated. The fact that French regions have developed specialization strategies, consequently relying a lot on inter‐regional trade, makes it less problematic. Transport of consumers to local shops or to supermarkets is not considered.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Pressures Embodied in the French Cereals Supply Chain

Courtonne¹,

Longaretti²,

Alapetite³

et al. 2016

J of Industrial Ecology

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International audienceFrance is the second largest exporter of cereals in the world. Although the cereals supply chain is an asset for the country's economy and employment, it is at the same time responsible for a number of pressures on the local and global environment including greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and stresses on water quality and quantity. This article aims at evaluating this situation from an environmental point of view by linking productions occurring in French regions with consumption occurring in France and abroad. Based on previous work on Material Flow Analysis, we use an Absorbing Markov Chain model to study the fate of French cereals and link worldwide consumption to environmental pressures along the supply chain, that is, induced by production, transformation or transport. The model is based on physical supply and use tables and distinguishes between 21 industries, 22 products, 38 regions of various spatial resolution (22 French regions, 10 countries, 6 continents) and 4 modes of transport. Energy use, GHG emissions, land use, use of pesticides and blue water footprint are studied. Illustrative examples are taken in order to demonstrate the versatility of the results produced, for instance: Where and under what form does local production end up? How do regions compare relatively to their production and consumption footprints? These results are designed to be a first step towards scenario analysis for decision-aiding that would also include socioeconomic indicators. Examples of such scenarios are discussed in the conclusion

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Pressures Embodied in the French Cereals Supply Chain

Courtonne¹,

Longaretti²,

Alapetite³

et al. 2016

J of Industrial Ecology

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“…Subnational areas, or grid cells, may potentially be treated as additional regions. Developing combined sub-national / multi-national MRIO accounts is an active field of work434445. While this improved detail would increase the accuracy of the results, we have no reason to expect a priori that this shortcoming introduces any systematic bias into the results.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resource footprints and their ecosystem consequences

Verones

Moran

Stadler

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

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A meaningful environmental impact analysis should go beyond the accounting of pressures from resource use and actually assess how resource demand affects ecosystems. The various currently available footprints of nations report the environmental pressures e.g. water use or pollutant emissions, driven by consumption. However, there have been limited attempts to assess the environmental consequences of these pressures. Ultimately, consequences, not pressures, should guide environmental policymaking. The newly released LC-Impact method demonstrates progress on the path to providing this missing link. Here we present “ecosystem impact footprints” in terms of the consequences for biodiversity and assess the differences in impact footprint results from MRIO-based pressure footprints. The new perspective reveals major changes in the relative contribution of nations to global footprints. Wealthy countries have high pressure footprints in lower-income countries but their impact footprints often have their origin in higher-income countries. This shift in perspective provides a different insight on where to focus policy responses to preserve biodiversity.

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“…In order to take into account the regional differences in environmental and social conditions within producing countries, footprint methods need to move from the aggregated national to a spatially detailed level 36,[45][46][47][48][49] . Land footprint studies use physical or monetary production and trade data and apply topdown or bottom-up methods to connect land use with final consumption 22 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%